Insights

Welcome back to the Global Month Ahead, your briefing on the events that will define the month to come, hosted by Associate Director Isabelle Trick.

This month, Isabelle Trick is joined by Ed King to preview the upcoming G7 summit, Thomas Gratowski looks towards pivotal elections in Turkey, and Alexander Smotrov explains tensions over grain exports among EU nations and Ukraine.

The growing debate around Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) has begun to focus increasingly on the question of cross-border payments. A number of pilots around the world have begun to test the practical questions of whether CBDCs can improve global trade invoicing. These discussions and the review of pilots have generally been confined to CBDC specialists and a…

Welcome back to the Global Month Ahead, your preview of the key events of the month to come.

Welcome back to the Global Month Ahead, Global Counsel's briefing on the events and stories that will define the month to come. In each episode, Global Macro Associate Director Isabelle Trick will hear from different members of the GC team to preview the month's stories before they are in the headlines.

This year, Global Counsel's flagship policy conference is exploring the Politics of Food. Events throughout the month of January will offer a chance to debate and discuss the technological, regulatory and geopolitical challenges testing food systems around the world in 2023.

The world economy enters the new year on shaky ground. The post-pandemic rebound is losing steam. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the geopolitical fallout is being felt across the globe. Inflation, rising interest rates and the strong US dollar are impacting countries in every region of the world. Major advanced economies are set to slow – or even contract - in 2023,…

Welcome back to the Global Month Ahead, our monthly podcast looking at the stories that will define the month to come.

Welcome back to the Global Month Ahead, Global Counsel's briefing on the events and stories that will define the month to come.

Welcome back to the Global Month Ahead, Global Counsel's briefing on the events and stories that will define the month to come. In each episode, Global Macro Associate Director Isabelle Trick will hear from different members of the GC team to preview the month's stories before they are in the headlines.

Welcome to the Global Month Ahead, a new Global Counsel podcast highlighting the key events in the month to come. In each episode, Global Macro Associate Director Isabelle Trick will hear from different members of the GC team to preview the month's stories before they are in the headlines.

As the world’s biggest international finance institutions, the IMF and World Bank, gathered for their annual Spring Meetings, Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF’s managing director, warned of the compounding crises affecting the world. Africa, Georgieva said, was “particularly vulnerable” to the economic upheaval following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

This episode is part of our annual conference 'The Politics of'. This year's edition, 'The Politics of Decoupling', will present a global perspective on China’s industrial and political strategy for the next decade, and how it will affect its relationship with western-aligned countries.

In late November, China’s flagship Africa summit, the Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) took place in Senegal. In 2022, the EU, the US, Russia, and Japan have all planned major Africa-focused summits. This clustering of Africa + 1 summits has given rise to debates about whether we are witnessing a new intensification of foreign interest in the continent. But is…

At the end of each year, the Global Counsel team has a tradition of sharing among ourselves a selection of our favourite articles, books and podcasts. We also share the list with our network in what has become a staple of GC holiday communications. Some of this informs our day jobs, but most of it can also be filed against the (very) interesting times we live in.

One month ago, South Africa experienced the most severe unrest since the end of Apartheid in 1994. It left more than 330 dead, 40,000 businesses looted, burnt, or vandalised, and caused at least $3.4 bn in economic damage. The government was forced to deploy 25,000 troops to regain control. The circumstances in South Africa were unique. However, South Africa’s week of…

G20 finance ministers and central bank governors met on July 9th and 10th in a meeting that has received significant coverage due to one reason: the group endorsed the new international tax deal previously agreed by the G7 and OECD. While historic, this means less attention has been paid to other G20 priorities. Global vaccine access, climate finance and low-income…

Elly Darkin, Associate in the Trade & Manufacturing Practice, and Isabelle Trick, Senior Associate in the Global Macro Practice, discuss vaccine rollout in Africa and whether a temporary intellectual property waiver for vaccines will help or hinder efforts to vaccinate Africa and the wider developing world.